OMG! Do not bother with the Man in the High Castle or anything by Phillip K. Dick, ever. That was a horrible story! Just stupid.

The men in the meeting were ambushed and ended up killing some random Nazi guys. Why? Who knows? The story didn't say anything else about that. It just used it send one of the men into a boring existential crises involving a piece of jewelry he got from the jewelry makers. In it he envisioned very briefly a world where the Allies won the war. As soon as it started it was over. He then had a heart attack and we never see him again. A woman in the book discovers her lover is a Nazi sent to kill the man in the high castle for writing the book. She kills him and goes to see the man himself. There she reveals that the book they are all reading is, in fact, the truth. The Allies did win the war. I guess they are all trapped in an alternate reality.

.

All of the above is told in broken English with few complete sentences. The pertinent parts are mostly hinted at. Crap. The book was crap. I also learned far more about the I cheng than I ever wanted to know. Apparently, Dick was fascinated by it and fashioned the ENTIRE story around it.

I accidentally started reading Harry Potter again a while ago, even though I have a million new books I've never read, and now I'm on book four. But Harry Potter is just such a comfort zone for me. It's hard for me to find the energy to read, but Harry Potter is just so easy to get into again.

Just finished Norse Mythology, as retold by Neil Gaiman. Before that a couple of books by Matt Haig (The Radleys and Humans), both of which were a quick, light read. Currently reading my "comfort zone" - a PG Wodehouse collection.

Fiction: The Switch, about a guy who accidentally picks up the wrong Macbook at the airport, and because the owner's assistant is really bad at his job and botches an attempt at recovery, the guy twigs on to the fact that there's something wicked in the laptop and he could do a public service by sharing it with the media.

Nonfiction: A Crack in Creation, which is about the discovery of the CRISPR gene editing tool which may be able to cure a lot of diseases and eventually create superhumans. Well, cure diseases, anyway. People get distressed when you mention creating superhumans, but I want Khan Noonien Singh!

I bought it on a whim for my Kindle app and I've been planning to try Tanuki Soba and Kitsune Udon. Now that I know the secret to get shrimp to lay flat when deep fried for Tempura, I can stop pondering that question along with how toothpaste is put in the tube.

I actually may buy more ebooks from Kindle. I had a lot of samples of cookbooks, language phrasebooks, manga, the Garfield compilations dating back to Garfield at Large on June 19, 1978, when Garfield walked on 4 legs and the design was heavy on the lineart details for characters and the remaining Captain Underpants books.

"There are some obstacles that cannot be removed with a mere show of force."
-King of Atlantis, as portrayed by Leonard Nimoy, Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Shadowed Souls. It's a collection of short stories from various authors, including a standalone story about Molly in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series.

I like that most of the stories I've read so far are explained just enough to make sense, even if I haven't read a single story by any of the other authors. The stories are engaging enough to be a good read, even with no previous relationship to the characters.